Flyver – Drone Apps

Drones are a big thing right now. But they’re also relatively new to the masses. As we’ve seen time and time again, people are prone to react violently to drones, because they are unfamiliar objects. Honestly, our reaction is not that different from thatofananimal and that’s perfectly normal. People want their privacy and with every new technology, some time needs to pass before we can establish how to ethically protect that privacy. There is no doubt in our minds that drones are the future, however we firmly believe that the only way for them to become a mainstay in human society is if we use them ethically. Until clear guidelines and limitations are made official, it’s going to be hard to use the law in order to protect your privacy from drones, which is why we created this little list of tools you can use to keep your private life private, so that you don’t do something like this:

1. Be Informed

This is pretty much the most important part. Educate yourself on the capabilities of consumer drones and whether there are any companies performing drone services in your region. Often times the drones you see in the sky might be on a completely different mission than to spy on you. Know what your rights are and who to call in case you feel there is an invasion of your privacy. In most countries calling the police is the best option, but drone law varies a lot from country to country nowadays, so you can’t be sure without checking first.

2. Use These Tools

The Rapere Intercept is a drone designed to protect your privacy from other drones. You basically just point it towards a drone that’s bothering you, the Rapere takes off, drops a tangle onto the other drone’s propellors, which in turn prevents them from spinning and the drone rapidly falls to the ground. This might however be considered overkill, since you are almost certainly destroying someone’s drone and preventing him from learning how to ethically use it. The Rapere is still in development, but you can subscribe on their website to get notified when it comes out.

Cyborg Unplug is a much more civilised solution ot the drone privacy problem. It’s a device which you plug into an electricity outlet and it works in a very simple way. It has two modes, territory protection and all-out-mode. The basic idea of the device is that it checks networks for unauthorised devices and prevents them from shooting video or whatever else footage they might be making. In territory mode this applies only to you home network. In all-out-mode it covers everything within the range of the Cyborg Unplug, however might not necessarily be legal everywhere. The device is not limited to just drones. It can also stop anything from Google Glass to a smart smoke detector from broadcasting a signal through the network.

3. Hire an anti-drone service

If all else fails and you’re really bent on getting drones out of your life a an anti-drone service akin to Drone Shield may be what you’re looking for. The system detects any drones in the vicinity regardless of size and type of signal emitted. Considering that it’s being used for high-profile vents such as the Boston Marathon, we’re quite certain Drone Shield would be sufficient for anyone’s needs

If you have any other suggestions for how to protect your privacy, please leave them in the comments below. And don;t forget that it’s our job to sue drones responsibly, so that people don;t have fear which spawn the need for such articles!

1. Cow Art

If we still had the creative category, this would have fit right in there. Surprisingly, or rather unsurprisingly, no one up to this point has used cows to draw images that are visible from the air. Until now. Derek Klingenberg uses a truck full of feed , a large herd of cows and a drone to make what he calls #CowArt. The way eh does it is pretty simple, he just drops feed in certain locations that form some sort of shape and then uses the truck to guide the cows to those locations. The end result is a smile, comprised of quite a few cows, visible from the sky.

2. ‘Star Wars’ Snow Speeder

Olivier C does it again. Week after week we see him create these amazing Star Wars replica drones, and he fails to disappoint us with his snow speeder. The prolific replica maker seems to have looked through everything including the little details like the rebel Alliance Starbird insignia. The result not only looks like the real, well fictional really, thing, but he also manages ot make it move like the snow speeder, as we see from the video.

3. Extreme Snowboarding Video by Xavier De Le Rue

As avid skiers and snowboarders, we believe that Xavier De Le Rue is one of the best things to ever come out of France, along with champagne and Daft Punk. As a drone company, we believe that a follow me function is one of the best ever developed. So you can imagine what that combo feels. The video is quite basic, but shows us how much drones could change in the way we film extreme sports. No longer does the athlete actively have to mind any equipment. That combined with the fact that a drone can get significantly closer to a person than a helicopter make us confident that the likes of the HEXO+ will be a mainstay in extreme sports productions.

4. Planting a Billion Trees Per Year

The world’s supply of tree is decreasing rapidly and we are hardly able to keep up with it. Despite repopulaiton efforts, the number of trees in the world decreases by an estimated 11 billion per year. A drone startup named BioCarbon Engineering is aiming to significantly influence that statistic by targeting the immodest goal of planting one billion trees per year.

5. Herd and Land Monitoring

Australian pastoralists have adopted using drones to monitor their large estates more efficiently. The normal method of sending people on foot requires far more resources and much more time, which is why the drone is a perfectly natural fit here.

After travelling to events all over Europe the Flyver team decided to aim a bit closer to home this time. This is why we will have a significant presence at MobCon Bulgaria 2015.

Since its inception in 2012, MobCon has become one of the most important events in the technology industry all over the world. It focuses on bringing together industry leaders in the mobile space in order to show how innovations and developments will shape the future of mobile. The Bulgarian edition of MobCon, which is in its second year, will take place on April 5th, Sunday at the Inter Expo Center in Sofia and the pre-event workshops will happen on April 4th, Saturday

Flyver will have a presence on both the presentation floor and in the workshop area. On Saturday, co-founder Tihomir will host a workshop on building drone apps using the Flyver SDK. If you want to use the Flyver SDK, we urge you to sign up as the workshop will provide strictly practical advice on the process of writing apps for drones.

Between 10:30 and 11:15 on Sunday, co-founder Anton will give a presentation about the future of drones as app-enabled devices. The presentation will take place in the Musala room. If you want to know how drone apps will provide with value consumers and businesses alike, don’t miss it. If this is enough for you, we also have a surprise that is sure to make you smile.

In addition to Flyver, the conference is also host to a plethora of exciting activities such as a two-day hack-a-thon event and workshops in all fields of mobile development, including UI/UX, Wearable and Monetization. Basically, if you;re a developer it’s going to be the place to be this weekend, so don’t miss it!

Flyver SDK allows you to serve a webpage directly from your smartphone.

To do so, you must put all your webpage files(.html, .css, .js, images) in the FlyverCore/src/main/assets/webpage/ folder(only plain files, folder structure is not supported for now) and the page will be served on the device’s IP address. The files in this folder are deployed automatically with the .apk of the application

The HTTP server used for this is NanoHTTPD, which is subclassed in utils/java/co.flyver.utils/NanoHTTPDServer, which implements its serve method

1. Shep, the Sheep Herding Drone

What are the requirements for a shepherd dog? Large, loud, threatening, can direct sheep. If that’s the case, why not use a drone and cut costs significantly. That’s probably the reasoning behind sheep farmer Paul Brennan’s new project, Shep the Drone. Paul figured out that the loud whirring noises of a quadcopter would be enough to make a herd of sheep flee in the direction he wants them to, so using his own personal drone he made the wonderfully funny video you see above. Right now the drone requires a pilot to perform its task, which isn;t really practical, but in the future drones could have apps that let them herd sheep autonomously, instead of dogs.

2. A Drone that Moves like a Butterfly

Around here we see a lot of drones that are mean to help preserve nature, but not a lot that are meant to replicate it. German robotics company Festo designed a drone which flies like a real butterfly and is not much bigger in size. The drone weighs a mere 32 grams and uses flapping wings to stay above ground. Because it is so tiny, navigation and processing are outsourced and the tiny robotic butterflies are being tracked by cameras all around the Festo lobby. The results are visually stunning. If one doesn’t look carefully, he might think he’s looking at real butterflies.

3. Looking for Stray Dogs

Tracking stray dogs has proven a very difficult task for county administrations all around the world. The fact of the matter is that dogs simply move around and often time sleep in places which are inaccessible to humans. A new project by the World Animal Awareness Society aims to solve that problem in Houston using drones and a mobile app. Users will be able to personally tag locations where they see dogs and in the meantime, DJI Inpsire 1’s will be flying around Houston looking for strays that might otherwise have been missed by the volunteers. That’s the good part. The bad part is that the intention is to turn this into a reality show about the pilots and the process of looking for dogs. While this will drive awareness to some extent, it is also exploitation of the dogs for the purpose of getting viewership. A documentary format would be much more suitable if one truly wanted to drive compassion for the homeless pups.

4. The Star Destroyer Drone

Youtube user Olivier C deserves an award for realising the dreams of nerds all over the world. This time he comes to us with a flying replica of a Star Destroyer. Previously we’ve seen his Millenium Falcon and his Tie interceptor and every time the feeling is the same – pure bliss. Now he just needs to add some laser shooting capabilities to those copters and a new hobby for people all around the world will come to life.

5. Saving People from Drowning

Lifeguards, start getting yourselves re-qualified because drones might soon take you out of work. A project being developed on the beaches in Chile is working on creating a drone that will get to drowning victims within thirty seconds and drop a lifesaver. In comparison to the average lifeguard response time of 2 to 3 minutes, the drone could lead to many more lives being saved. Of course, dropping a lifesaver is not the ultimate solution to saving a drowning person, which is why the drone also includes a set of speakers to provide instructions and reassurance until a real lifeguard makes it to the person.